The Magician's Guild - Review

The Facts

Title	The Magician’s Guild (The Black Magician Trilogy, part 1)
Author	Trudi Canavan
Genre	Fantasy, young adult
Publisher	Orbit Books
Publication date	2001

The Summary

Magicians in Kyralia are all members of wealthy families. Every winter they purge the capital’s streets of the slum dwellers (or “dwells”). The story starts when Sonea, a young dwell, joins her friends in throwing rocks at these magicians. A magical shield protects them, but Sonea wishes her rock would pierce the shield. Lo and behold, this happens and Lord Fergun is hit in the head. Both Sonea and the magicians are shocked at this first manifestation of her magical powers. Fearing retaliation, Sonea flees and goes into hiding with the help of her friend Cery and the Thieves, a (literally) underground criminal organisation.

Her powers grow stronger and Sonea doesn’t know how to control them which leads to her accidentally setting fire to her surroundings multiple times. Meanwhile, the magicians are indeed hunting her down. Some, like Lord Fergun, out of anger but others, like Lord Rothen and Lord Dannyl, out of concern that she might hurt herself and other people. One night, Sonea and Cery sneak into the Magician’s Guild, hoping to learn how to control her powers. Their quest is unsuccessful but Sonea witnesses a magician in black robes and covered in blood performing a ritual on a servant. Part one of this book ends when Rothen locates Sonea and convinces her to come to the Guild to learn Control over her powers.

In part two Sonea not only learns how to control her powers but also slowly learns to trust Rothen. She doesn’t really care about staying in the Guild once she’s achieved Control but instead wants to go home to her family. Her newly formed trust is challenged when Fergun sets up a scheme to force Sonea to betray the Guild. His plans are discovered and at the trial Sonea allows Lorlen, the Guild’s Administrator (more or less the second-in-command), to read her mind and witness what Fergun told her. During this truthread however, Lorlen sees the image of the black-robed magician and it is revealed this is in fact Akkarin, the High Lord and Lorlen’s best friend, practicing forbidden black magic. Determined to help the Guild fight this new enemy, Sonea decides to stay with them, under Rothen’s guardianship.

The Impressions

While reading this book, it is important to keep in mind that it is the first part of a trilogy. The villain in this part is rather weak and unimpressive. His scheme to trick Sonea is not menacing and it is hard to understand why she feels afraid. Then again, Sonea seemed a bit passive from time to time. This might be explained by her situation. First she is terrified of her powers and the Guild chasing her, then she is confined to Rothen’s quarters in the Guild while he teaches her how to control those powers. She thinks about escaping or simply leaving the Guild once she’s learned Control, but never really undertakes any action.

I also felt the first part just dragged on and on. Yes, we get it: Sonea doesn’t have control over her powers, she’s a danger to herself and her surroundings and the Guild wants to find her. Do we really need 150 pages of that? That’s half of this book. Time and pages that could’ve been spent on more character development. Or just shorten all three books and make it one big one. Then again, fantasy writers, publishers and readers love their trilogies. I did like the different points of view we get. Among them there’s Sonea’s, Dannyl’s and Rothen’s. This is interesting because we get an insight into the minds of these people, their inner turmoils and motivations. The downside of it is that we immediately know that Rothen and Dannyl are The Good Guys and genuinely want to help Sonea.

Those 150 pages of her being on the run didn’t give me the thrill they’re supposed to provide. You know she’s going to get caught because we need a story and you know at least some magicians are nice guys and gals. I kept wishing they’d catch her on the next page so we could move on with the story.

The writing style and language don’t drag the story down in my opinion. The only thing that bothered me was the amount of chuckling going on. I know some readers had a problem with the author coming up with new names for existing animals (ceryni for rat, for example) but this didn’t bother me. Ms. Canavan’s explanation is that those animals aren’t exactly the same as the ones we know, but fill a similar role in their ecosystem. The one exception to this seems to be horses, which are simply called horses. In general I like the world creation, especially the Thieves and the way magic and mindreading works. 

This story is set entirely within the city of Imardin, the capital of Kyralia, so the physical/geographical side of world creation is rather limited. The second and third book do expand the world way beyond the city walls. So just like the story is an introduction to the bigger story about the black magician, it’s also only a first glimpse into this world.

The Conclusion

All in all this is a good start for a young adult fantasy trilogy. Just don’t expect it to be JRR Tolkien or even JK Rowling. It is a fun and easy read with a fairly simple plot. The first part could have been shorter which would create space for a stronger plot with a more menacing villain. This book sets up the conflict for the second and third parts of the trilogy which are more interesting.